Quote collection
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"Think about all of the families where the father is a doctor and the son is a doctor or generations of coal miners. Why did they go into that line of work? Because that's what they were taught. Or was it in their genes? It's not an either/or question. It's both. I was inclined in that way. I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up."
"I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up."
"And I don't think that success is going to destroy me at this point in my life, like I used to think."
"If you're playing in a tradition and you have no reference point to it, no understanding and have not studied it, I can't respect that."
"Work ... is redemption."
"With time the unbearable becomes shocking, becomes sad, and finally becomes poignant."
"Being in Vietnam changed him [Johnny Cash] fundamentally. He was devastated when we went into Iraq."
"Southern gentility is evocative to me."
"When I was 18 years old, I went on the road with my dad after I graduated from high school. And we were riding on the tour bus one day, kind of rolling through the South, and he mentioned a song. We started talking about songs, and he mentioned one, and I said I don't know that one. And he mentioned another. I said I don't know that one either, Dad, and he became very alarmed that I didn't know what he considered my own musical genealogy."
"He [Johnny Cash] was so fragile. We invaded Iraq in March, and he died in September. And because his health was so fragile, he couldn't take the controversy of making a public statement against the war. He knew that people were rabid. They attacked me mercilessly after I did the press conference with Musicians United to Win Without War. He knew that he couldn't tolerate that."
"Celtic music is part of the language in Scotland and Ireland, where every kid and grandparent knows those songs, music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Snow is getting entrenched here. They are part of our cultural language. It's part of a living treasure. It doesn't just belong to a museum."
"I have a real worker-bee mentality. Just show up, just do it. Even if you feel like s--t and you think you're terrible and you'll never get better and it will never go anywhere, just show up and do it. And, eventually, something happens."
"Isn't that the goal, as you grow older? That you start reclaiming those parts of yourself you didn't recognize or didn't think were there all along? That's what happened when I made The River and the Thread record."
"You stand in front of a great painting and your heart just opens and your mind expands about what's possible. That, to me, is a connection to what God is."
"I couldn't listen to music with lyrics for the first few months after the brain surgery, because they were too complex and disturbing. So I listened to a lot of classical music. I didn't really want to read, either, so I listened to books on tape or watched movies. I also re-taught myself all of my childhood piano pieces. It helped me repair my brain."
"I think any young person who is going into the same field as their parent whose parent has been very successful, it's complicated.And it was complicated for me."
"I wanted to be a songwriter.I didn't so much want to be a performer.I more grew into that just from being a songwriter."
"Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life."
"I'm not the type to turn to drugs and alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music - and children."
"I spent nearly two hours deciding on an outfit that would look as if the subject of clothing had never crossed my mind, but would in fact show off my best features and miraculously hide the extra pounds."